Franca Rame

Franca Rame, (born July 18, 1929, Parabiago, near Milan, Italy—died May 29, 2013, Milan), Italian actress and playwright who was the muse, starring actress, and frequent writing partner of acclaimed playwright Dario Fo, whom she met in 1951 and married in 1954. During the couple’s six decades together, the level of their collaboration was such that it was sometimes impossible to ascertain which of them had written any particular play or scene—a fact that Fo emphasized in his acceptance speech when he was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature. Rame was born into a theatrical family and began acting in her teens, mainly in roles that highlighted her comic skills and blonde glamour. She made occasional films over the years but focused on the stage, including several feminist plays and productions staged with the various troupes that she cofounded with her husband. A lifelong political leftist, Rame was kidnapped, raped, and tortured by far-right extremists in 1973. The perpetrators were never formally charged, and a judicial inquiry determined in 1998 that the attack had been ordered by senior police officers. She interpreted her horrific experience in the theatrical monologue Lo stupro (1978; The Rape). Rame was elected in 2006 to represent the anticorruption Italy of Values Party in the Italian Senate, but she resigned two years later, citing her frustration with the country’s hidebound political system.

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